Keegan Dark (Blaise Godbe Lipman) and his boyfriend Wil (Timo Descamps), are two dudes just livin’ their lives gifted with X-Men (eidetic memory and a knack for fixing that which should not be able to be fixed respectively).
Our heroes make a trek to repair K-dawgs relationship with momma-dukes Celeste (Shannon Day); but the woman has moved on and started a new family… family which includes her new beau’s son Adrian (Andy Copeland) who is balls deep into the notion he can replace Keegan in Celeste’s life.
Things go over like a fart in a submarine, and soon Wil is M.I.A., Celeste is in a coma… and Keegan is immediately blamed as the cause by the local authorities, but our hero suspects Adrian is the cause of all that static. In order to solve the mystery at hand, Keegan will have to own up to some deep, dark family secrets while using his mental prowess to piece together the clues!
Jody Wheeler, who wrote, directed, and co-produced The Dark Place, presents a bit of a mixed bag with this thriller. On the one hand we get a beautiful looking film, with the interesting inclusion of characters with extraordinary abilities (conveyed through rather top-shelf effects work) and an engaging (though at times predictable) murder mystery narrative… but goddamn some of the dialogue in this picture is downright stuck up it’s own ass. You can tell that Wheeler knew he had a killer premise, and the visual skills to pull it off… but then he got a tad full of himself with the dialog.
Another positive with this one is that Wheeler doesn’t get all hung-up on the fact that two of his main characters are gay. They simply “are” and then are treated like any other duo out to solve a crisis… it’s refreshing, and the way it should be… representation without preaching, so A+ there!
Bottom line; The Dark Place is an engaging, unique thriller with a few stumbling blocks narrative-wise, but is well worth slappin’ your putrid peepers upon!
